Flying Monkeys Genius Of Suburbia | Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery

0 characters.
We love reviews! Turn your rating into one with ≥ 150 characters. Awesome. Thanks for the review!

In English, explain why you're giving this rating. Your review must discuss the beer's attributes (look, smell, taste, feel) and your overall impression in order to indicate that you have legitimately tried the beer. Nonconstructive reviews may be removed without notice and action may be taken on your account.

A dark gold color, this beer shows plenty of clarity. The yellow-tinged head is a foamy pillow that rises to a couple of fingers before settling to a tick layer. Lacing is impressive, as foamy deposits remain all over the glass.
The aroma is not as hoppy as I perceive the taste to be and mostly grainy. The hops do come as a surprise in the flavor, then, but do not consistently remain, alternating between biting and dropping off to taste more watery in a way I've rarely tasted. After an initial hit of flora and citrus, pine hits the back of the throat hard, perhaps a bit too hard, but thankfully edges back away. The profile is good, it just is odd in its consistency of flavor.
The feel is pretty good, moderately crisp and smooth but lightening up on the palate a bit too much. It's clean for sure, but also somewhat thin. Good overall.

The carbonation is quite low-key, and mostly shy in terms of letting its frothiness be known, the body medium-light in weight, and generally smooth, the overall hoppiness kind of taking the sheen off of things here. It finishes fairly dry, the cereal-esque wheatiness persisting well, alongside a lingering citrusy and piney bitterness.

Another style subsumed by the hopped to the nuts craze - this could very well just be referrred to as an IPWA (Indian Pale Wheat Ale). Wait, no, at 3.8% ABV, it would have to be an ISWA (India Session Wheat Ale). Anyways, this offering is indeed more hoppy than wheaty, and very much like the kids from the burbs who take a good thing and beat it to death via gentrification.

This guy pours from a bottle (Flying Monkey having, just by the by, maybe the ugliest branding in all of craft beer) a hazy gold/orange, capped by a couple fingers of foam that recede quickly to a few islands, but do leave some nice lacing. Smell is bitter and resiny, dank, with a touch of bitter orange, grapefruit, cat pee, and some biscuity malt. Taste is likewise quite hop-heavy, especially considering the ABV. Resin, pine, citrus, cat pee. Balanced by a bit of pale and wheat maltiness. Finishes dry. Good body, good carbonation. . . . Flying Monkeys found an interesting way to get around the problem of the session beer and its general lack of maltiness--by using an interesting mix of a bunch of different kind of hops, so that your senses are getting it from all sides and you forget about the lighter malt base.

This one is quite interesting. It punches above its weight-class, but it also seems poorly categorized: this is more IPA than wheat beer in terms of flavour profile, even if it is technically a wheat beer. Whatever you want to call it (India session wheat ale?), I can see it finding an audience among the beer cognoscenti for sure.

355 mL bottle from a six-pack picked up at the LCBO; no apparent bottling date. Served slightly chilled.

This session ale pours translucent pale gold in colour, kicking up a little more than one finger of soapy, white-coloured head that displays average retention. By the three minute mark, it has been reduced to a thin, foamy collar and a few wisps on the surface; a decent quantity of messy lace is also deposited. Upon the first sniff, my nose is presented with a blend of orange peel, grapefruit rind and resiny pine sap. Mildly earthy, with a relatively bland grainy wheat malt sweetness off in the background.

As others have noted, this beer tastes surprisingly bitter/astringent, considering its low abv. Not much is heard from the malt backing here - some light, relatively neutral wheaty grain sweetness. Rather predictably, it is the hops that dominate, providing both a pithy grapefruit bitterness as well as some danker, herbal, pine-resin notes. The latter lingers into the aftertaste and dries the palate out quite effectively - this is the sort of beer I'll either need to keep sipping continuously, or drink with something salty to munch on hand. Light-bodied, with moderate carbonation levels that provide a decent bite with a weakly prickly mouthfeel. A touch on the watery side, to be honest, but that's light beer for you.

Final Grade: 3.59, a B grade. It seems like every Ontario brewery is releasing their own version of a hoppy session ale these days. Over the past 6 months or so, I've had more examples than I can recall, and sadly I must say that Genius of Suburbia is not one of the more memorable inclusions on that list. Let me clarify - this is not a bad beer, but I can guarantee that I will not be committing to another sixer any time soon - particularly when their Hoptical Illusion and Smash Bomb are selling for the same price. In addition to being better beers, they are higher in alcohol - and besides, if I really want a light beer, a couple of tallboys of [insert ISA here] would be a sounder financial (and gustatory) investment.

A- Clear light yellow with a nice white head that lingers
S-I get fruity European hops and what I can only describe as a beer smell...
M-medium to high carbonation and a light crisp mouthfeel
T-Malt upfront and a surprising bitterness from only 21IBU, strange
O-This is a pretty good session beer, with more flavour and bitterness than I was expecting.

Qhite resiny and bitter. Flying Monkeys are definitely leaning on the hops to fill out the flavour here, and there isn't much in the way of a backbone. But they've put together an interesting and effective hop mix, so it doesn't bug me in the way many session IPAs do. Definitely punches above its ABV, but I'm not entirely sold on it.